


The First Halloween

by cookinguptales



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5156075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy has lived through fifteen Halloweens, but she doesn't remember any of them. As far as she knows, no one in Gravity Falls does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Halloween

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> A belated Happy Halloween, Missy! This is admittedly a bit late for a Halloween fic, but I hated that you only got one treat when you've been so active in the exchange. I hope this little trick will be fun--even a week after Halloween. ♥

Wendy has lived through fifteen Halloweens, but she doesn't remember any of them. As far as she knows, no one in Gravity Falls does. There's a sensation there, an almost-memory that whispers of running through the woods and screams all around, terrified and joyous both, but her mind slides away from it whenever she tries to grab hold. The denizens of Gravity Falls are no strangers to lost evenings and fuzzy recollections, but there's something special about Halloween. There's something more. Something digs deep under her skin, cobwebs clinging to her bones and phantom muscle memory recalling frantic movements, and that something _lingers_. How many passes with the memory erasing gun does it take? Two? Three? Could there ever be enough to fully remove those horrors from their minds?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

As a child, she assumed that this was just what Halloween was. She'd heard from cartoons and storybooks that Halloween was a time of both mischief and fear, when the demarcation between her world and the next was softened. Spooky things happened on Halloween, and the ragged tears in her memory were as much a part of the holiday as ghosts and vampires and caramel apples. As she grew, though, she wondered. She had friends from other towns, and they could tell her exactly what they'd been for Halloween every year. They had wild stories of getting king size candy bars and buying suspicious quantities of toilet paper. She didn't have any of that. She just had the sensation of waking up in her bed the next morning, safe and sound and slightly woozy.

There are times when Wendy turns to joke with the person next to her only to find an empty space where she'd expected a friend. She wracks her brain, trying to remember the name of the person who'd stood there at her side, but always gives up in the end. They'd been there before Halloween, she thinks. If they appeared in front of her now, would she have the courage to ask what they'd seen? She likes to think she would, but then she remembers the room full of deleted memories, some of them hers.

She remembers disbanding the Society of the Blind Eye.

This year, there will be no one to erase their memories of Halloween night. They won't have to make do with a shallow imitation during the twilight hours of summer. They'll live this year with eyes wide open, and they will not be able to forget what they see. But Wendy's learned a lot this summer. She thinks she's ready for whatever Gravity Falls has to throw at her. She's lived through fifteen Halloweens. She's not about to break her streak now.


End file.
